Tim O'Reilly Sends an "Open Letter to Microsoft"

Tim O'Reilly, President and CEO of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.,
responds to the "Halloween Document", an internal Microsoft memorandum
analyzing Open Source software and its potential impact for
Microsoft. The memo, posted on the Internet by Open Source evangelist
Eric Raymond two days ago, is at:
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/

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An Open Letter to Microsoft
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In the already infamous
"Halloween Document", you laid out a strategy
for competing with the Open Source movement. You say:

"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server
applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple
protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we
can deny OSS projects entry into the market."

The point that you seem to miss is that it is these simple, commoditized
protocols and a culture of building freely on the work of others that
brought us the explosion of innovation known as the Internet. And while
the Internet has opened new areas of competition for Microsoft, it has
also opened up enormous opportunities.

I'm not just talking about new information businesses like Expedia. You
have only to look at your two major breadwinners, the Windows operating
system and the Office application suite, to see the positive impact of
Open Source on your bottom line. Internet-enabling Windows and Office
has been the major source of new features that make it worthwhile for
customers to buy new systems or upgrade their applications. Lacking the
Internet, you would have had to rely on such dubious innovations as
Microsoft Bob to drive upgrade revenue. And now you want to undermine
Open Source? Try to be serious!

The collaborative, massively distributed development process behind the
Internet and Open Source projects is not your enemy. It is your
friend, the source of basic research that you can turn into your next
generation of products.

At bottom, the Open Source movement is an expression of the Western
academic tradition, innovation and discovery through the free exchange
of ideas. You rig that system at your peril. You have only to look at
the stagnation of Soviet science and industry under a centralized
autocratic system, versus the innovation that happened in our free
markets, to see what fate you have in store for yourselves if you
succeed.

Microsoft is too smart a company to sacrifice long-term vitality for
short-term advantage. Instead of trying to crush Open Source, you
should follow the lead of companies like O'Reilly, IBM and Silicon
Graphics, who are supporting various Open Source communities while
finding ways to build commercial added-value products on the open
platforms these communities provide.

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